baz'art

musique

Žoambo Žoet Workestrao

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rock alternatif et folklore moderne | slo

dimanche 17 juin 20h

cour intérieure en bas

Žoambo Žoet Workestrao est un power trio de ljubjana ayant vu le jour en 1992, dans le contexte déroutant de la recherche d'identité capitaliste du pays après la chute du mur. Dans ce contexte, le groupe tournera beaucoup en europe et sera très vite catalogué comme appartenant à la scène de la "Druga Liga", nom donné aux groupes "weird" de l'ex-Yougoslavie; pas sans avoir tort! ŽOAMBO ŽOET WORKESTRAO mélange volontiers le rebetico, les musique slaves, le rock alternatif, l'impro free, le rock mathématique et les thèmes de chansons traditionnelles.... après 20 ans d'activisme musical, à revoir encore ou à découvrir absolument!

When contemplating avant-rock from South-East Europe (Is there such a thing?, Why would one do so?), one cannot ignore a band whose name was a reaction to the absurdity of Latin-American soap operas starting to appear in the newly commoditised country. The power trio of Ljubljana (Slovenia, halfway between Venice and Vienna, ¾ woodlands, population 2 million) was founded in 1992. In the then context of the nation’s search for a new capitalist identity, it stuck out as an experimental/improvised/free luddite rock band. Twenty years later, it is clear that the ŽŽW were merely an original RIO band posing as a freak in the environment lacking both experiment and improvisation scene. In the years to follow, ŽŽW were part of the Druga liga scene (“weird” bands from ex-Yugoslavia), and later collaborated in a similarly offish Slovene pack Paket angažma. The band has toured western and south European clubs, had flickering moments of international acknowledgement (The Rennes Moo festival, the Budapest Big Ear and Pepsi Sziget festivals, etc) but does not wish to talk about the past much.

Žoambo Žoet Workestrao has a new album: Soap for Sweatshops. Ten pieces in 38 minutes are the result of a four-year collective composing upon a sixteen-year brew. During the four years, the bend consumed time for meticulous composing, sleepless briefings and self-criticism through nettles over hands. The music that ripened without deadlines is so far the band's most accomplished yet appetising and hearty enterprise. It has never been so endemic while flagrant like a raw food melting pot of genres populated by a Tchaikovsy's ear, the echoing of Langobardian fanfare, tripping of a Greek turtle or a frozen emigrant from East Berlin.

The music is, say, modern while, how anachronistically, encouraging smoking in public places. It is imbued with profound contempt for the now. The now that attempts to entertain and please but appears to be no more than soap for smelly armpits from underground workshops or an Apple for the famished Africans. With a smile of an old barman, Žoambo is sprinkling salt into your wounds while reminding you of the time and the place.

The orchestra, whose name is not intended to be pronounced, is, having trodden per aspera, finally out in the clear. Since it decided to develop a unique aesthetics and was bound of its own accord to the Caucasian rock, its actions were sometimes reminiscent of acrobatic figures of semi broken-in ravens. While this was not to many a person’s liking, the present album can be offered without qualms even to the mother-in-law as it is agreeable like the pizza flavoured Prometheus’ liver pâté.

The mother-in-law will doubtlessly enjoy the covers of a rembetika and a Roma piece. She will approve of the sound captured in the studio by masters Bojan Babić and Ivo Lorencin and kneaded by maestro Aldo Ivančić. She will be thrilled when she hears the saxophone parts contributed by the Swedish improviser Martin Küchen on an on-line session. She will say wow when she sees that among the musicians are also Dario Marušić, Evis Šuke and Denis Ružić & Emil Vojak on the violin, voice and roženice respectively. The record will also embellish your interieur as it is embedded into a sleeve by Goran Medjugorac who threw in scrupulously drawn frutti di mare over the background made with a rubber roller while the musicians underwent a photo shooting by esteemed Andrea Siegl.

Photographie : Andrea Ziegel

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